argument nor even a battery of artillery can break down. I hardly dare hope that this consideration will appear convincing to those who are used to maintaining the norm; and it is probably unnecessary that the notion of the great opposition of good and bad which is alive among men should die away, just as it is unnecessary that children should be born with the experience of men, or that red cheeks and curly hair should vanish from the earth. At any rate it is impossible. The world has many centuries to its reckoning, many nations have lived and died upon the earth, yet as far as we know from the books and traditions that have survived to us, the dispute between good and evil was never hushed. And it always so happened that good was not afraid of the light of day, and good men lived a united, social life; while evil hid itself in darkness, and the wicked always stood alone. Nor could it have been otherwise. All Tchekhov's heroes fear the light. They are lonely. They are ashamed of their hopelessness, and they know that men cannot help them. They go somewhere, perhaps even forward, but they call to no one to follow. All things are taken from them: they must create everything anew. Thence most probably is derived the unconcealed contempt with which they behave to the most precious products of common human creativeness. On whatever subject you begin to talk with a Tchekhov hero he has one reply to everything: _Nobody can teach me anything._ You offer him a new conception of the world: already in your very first words he feels that they all reduce to an attempt to lay the old bricks and stones over again, and he turns from you with impatience, and often with rudeness. Tchekhov is an extremely cautious writer. He fears and takes into account public opinion. Yet how unconcealed is the aversion he displays to accepted ideas and conceptions of the world. In _The Tedious Story,_ he at any rate preserves the tone and attitude of outward obedience. Later he throws aside all precautions, and instead of reproaching himself for his inability to submit to the general idea, openly rebels against it and jeers at it. In _Ivanov_ it already is sufficiently expressed; there was reason for the outburst of indignation which this play provoked in its day. Ivanov, I have already said, is a dead man. The only thing the artist can do with him is to bury him decently, that is, to praise his past, pity his present, and then, in order to mitigate the cheerless impression produced by death, to invite the general idea to the funeral. He might recall the universal problems of humanity in any one of the many stereotyped forms, and thus the difficult case which seemed insoluble would be removed. Together with Ivanov's death he should portray a bright young life, full of promise, and the impression of death and destruction would lose all its sting and bitterness. Tchekhov does just the opposite. Instead of endowing youth and ideals with power over